by Larzer Ziff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2001
Written in a velvety professorial voice, these excellent vignettes of five exemplary travelers provide a steady pulse of...
A deeply intelligent, chin-in-hand rumination on the nature of American travel-writing, or at least a selection thereof, from the Revolutionary War to the outbreak of WWI, by literary historian Ziff (Writing in the New Nation, not reviewed).
Examining an emblematic group composed of John Ledyard, John Lloyd Stephens, Bayard Taylor, Mark Twain, and Henry James, the author tracks the evolution of their travel pieces from early descriptive reports of discovery to distinct literary narratives. In all five, he finds elements that both reflected and embellished the national character, powerful writing that celebrated the exotic but also possessed “the author’s capacity to present his heightened self-awareness in a manner that serves to move readers to question the unexamined familiarities of their own lives.” This self-awareness, in turn, often prompted scalding glances at their own country. In Ledyard, who wrote a narrative of sailing with Captain Cook, then described traveling through Russia and Siberia in the years directly after the Revolutionary War, Ziff (English/Johns Hopkins Univ.) finds the most resolutely democratic of the five writers, a man who optimistically foresaw in the American experience a universal liberation of mankind. Stephens endeavored to bestow on the Americas their own monumental past by returning from Mexico with the first news of Chichén Itzá and Tulum. Taylor, the first to write about travel on a shoestring, later specialized in road-to-empire swagger, which made him an ideal companion for Commodore Perry. Twain hated travel-writing but brought to it the kind of horse sense that made readers check their preconceptions, challenged as well by his biting satires of racial prejudice. For James, it was “the European past flowing into the American present” that would complete the making of a nation.
Written in a velvety professorial voice, these excellent vignettes of five exemplary travelers provide a steady pulse of context and critique, amply demonstrating how travel literature helped shape a national identity. (21 color illustrations)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-300-08236-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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